Miller: A conflicted winter in Sochi

Feb. 3, 2014

Updated Feb. 4, 2014 1:54 p.m.

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People wait at a bus stop in Adler, Russia as a few stray dogs wander close-by not far from the Olympic Park days before the start of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. ABC News noted last week that officials here are rounding up the stray dogs and killing them. MARK RIGHTMIRE, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

People wait at a bus stop in Adler, Russia as a few stray dogs wander close-by not far from the Olympic Park days before the start of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. ABC News noted last week that officials here are rounding up the stray dogs and killing them. MARK RIGHTMIRE, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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ADLER, Russia – We are here, above all else, to celebrate the triumph not of the human athlete, but more the human spirit.

These are the Olympics, you know, and wearing a shiny medal isn’t the only way to display shining mettle.

But even before doing any of that – in fact, especially before doing any of that – we feel compelled to draw attention to the defeated, to the spirits too crushed to triumph.

Three days before they open, the Sochi Games promise to be many things. But no matter what happens after the giant candle is lit Friday, they can’t possibly become more of anything than what they are today – conflicted.

Conflicted, like the sight of these Winter Olympics happening among palm trees and cruise ships and crashing waves from the Black Sea. Conflicted, like an area known for an intolerance of gays being decorated Sunday morning by an impossibly brilliant rainbow. Conflicted, like a project designed to lift a region first flattening that region’s residents.

“An unprecedented thieves’ caper,” that’s what long-time local politician Boris Nemtsov calls this event, along with “a festival of corruption, a festival of human-rights violations, a festival of destroying the environment, a festival of destroying the only subtropical region in Russia.”

Other than that, hey, let the Games begin!

Those are five very un-Olympic-worthy descriptions, one for each of the famous rings hanging overhead here.

Yes, opposition can be found every time a city hosts an event so large that the entire world is invited. But this time, in this place, among these people, the resistance feels and looks so much more real.

There are reports of locals – many with already little to lose – losing even that in being displaced by Games construction, one neighborhood having its only shared outhouse torn down.

There are stories of embezzlement, of immigrant workers being exploited and of one project manager being fired, fleeing the country in fear and later claiming to be poisoned with mercury.

ABC News noted last week that officials here are even rounding up the stray dogs, which roam the streets in abundance, and killing them for the sake of a gathering that otherwise salutes life itself.

And to think, we all could be in Salzburg right now, in the charming Austrian village that was the location for “The Sound of Music.”

Instead, Salzburg’s bid fell short and the International Olympic Committee awarded the Games to Sochi, where today we hear mostly “The Sound of Silence,” so many residents muted and paved over by the greater plan.

“Some people made money off of this, but not the ordinary people, not the people who have to live in this country,” local shop owner Irina Kharchenko told the Associated Press. “They just walked on people’s heads.”

The Olympics, even in the best of situations, always will be an inconvenience to some, an intrusion to others. The Games should not, however, be an invasion.

Invasion sounds too much like war, and the Olympics are supposed to advance peace. Conflicted? This isn’t the place to mention the threat of terrorism that still looms over Sochi like the nearby snow-blanketed Caucasus Mountains.

Hosting the Olympics should cement a city in history and give it a permanent place in the culture of sports. Would any of us know the name Lake Placid were it not for the Winter Games?

Yet, so many things here feel temporary, from the hollow hotel walls to the hastily built facades to the fact that, before the Games came around, the area that is now Sochi’s Olympic Park was an enormous swamp.

It’s almost like they’re building a movie set, which, come to think of it, maybe they are, the idea being to sell the region as a year-round tourist destination through the images about to enter your living room.

The whole thing is hard to fathom, really, given that an Olympic-record $50-plus billion is being spent on these Games. That sort of money, apparently, can buy a lot of problems but still falls short in buying the simplest of solutions: happiness.

The Olympics are intended to be a joyous experience, an opportunity to promote civic pride. There are an estimated 350,000 people in the greater Sochi area. Here’s hoping we start to see more of them smile.

The Games have a way of changing perspectives once the skiing, skating and sledding begin. This version probably won’t be any different.

The competition starts. The focus shifts. The stories brightened. It goes back to being about the spirit, the reason we’re all here in the first place.

But, for one day, let’s not forget about the other spirits while there’s still time, the spirits already left behind once and about to be left behind again.

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